The tree you see here is our ‘Jesse Tree’ that we will be using over the Sundays of Advent. The Jesse tree leads us to prepare for Christmas by focusing on God’s plan of salvation throughout history, by attaching a different ornament symbolising key aspects of this each week.
The tree is scrawny and sparse. It is not a particularly attractive tree—nor is it meant to be. It is actually dead. The symbolism of the Jesse Tree itself comes from a key reading during Advent, Isaiah 11, where God’s people Israel are pictured as a tree that has been felled, leaving only a stump. The Kingdom of David would be brought low, like a tree cut down. God was bringing judgement upon them for their continual unfaithfulness and worship of the gods of their pagan neighbours. God had sent the prophets throughout the years to call his people to repentance, and to warn them to turn back to him. But they had refused to listen and had turned their backs on God.
That had been a problem from the beginning. In the reading from Genesis we hear of another tree, in the middle of the Garden of Eden:
Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:1-5).
Today we add our first decoration to the tree: an apple. The apple reminds us of the entrance of sin and its wages, death, into the world. It was not so much giving in to the Devil’s tempation to eat some fruit that was the downfall of the human race. It was the temptation to believe, in our natural state, that somehow God was mistaken. That he should know better—and that we know better than him. “Did God really say?” “Pffft—you will not surely die!”
Right there in the Garden, the devil had us right where he wanted us. For the first time human beings were afraid of God, and tried to hide from him. We blamed each other, the devil, and even God. People’s love turned back onto themselves instead of going out to God and others. We were bound to this will and bound to death and the kingdom of darkness. The family tree of God’s people had withered and died.
Our hanging of an apple on this tree this morning symbolises our participation in this rebellion against God; that sin is still with us today, causing us to disobey God just like Adam and Eve.
But the last words of the reading from Genesis are God’s promise, even there in the beginning, of a Saviour who would come and destroy the devil’s power. This Saviour would bruise his heel by victoriously stomping on Satan’s head. He would set his people free by taking their sin upon himself. He would come from the new shoot of the stump of Jesse. This is the Saviour announced in our Gospel reading, the One who would be given the name ‘Jesus’, because he will save his people from their sins.
All this took place throughout history for you. God was faithful just as he promised in the Garden of Eden; a promise he reaffirmed through Isaiah the prophet so many centuries later: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him ‘Immanuel’ which means ‘God with us’.
Advent is a time to remember and give thanks to God that he is not distant or removed from us, but in the Person of Christ, came to our broken and corrupt world, for you. God knows what human experience is like, for he became human just like us, to save us. He came to earth as a vulnerable infant, born of his mother Mary’s womb in a stinking stable, in the midst of the chaos of human life, in the depths of muck, for you. He knows the depths of suffering and even death itself. He triumphed over it for us to be your living, forgiving God, who has reconciled all things by his precious blood, on the Tree of the Cross.
God who is faithful to all his promises is with us again today. Jesus is here with you. He is with you with the fullness of divine grace and favour and has saved you from your sins.
Pairing with the Jesse Tree ornaments each Sunday is the lighting of a candle on our Advent wreath, symbolising that everything promised by God in the Scriptures is fulfilled by Christ, the light of the world, who has brought his light into our lives also. In whatever circumstances are currently a part of your life, may you hear God’s invitation to turn to his Son, who loves you. This season of Advent may your heart be a new manger for him, that you receive from him true joy, peace and hope that the world can neither give nor take away. Amen.
